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Ashley Simpson reports on the Eckhaus Latta show

by Ashley Simpson on 11 September 2017.

The Eckhaus Latta man or woman has an unapologetic sensuality and rawness. Gender is no consideration.

Eckhaus Latta’s show notes asked whether the quality of something 'was so good it looked fake, or was it so fake it looked good?' A fitting question in an age where social media has transformed our perceptions and shifted our relationship with the self to the point of alienation and arguable isolation. 'Not everything is up for grabs,' they asserted.

The designers, Zoe Latta and Mike Eckhaus, seemed to be making a play at millennial consumption and a statement on self-presentation and development in the age of the iPhone. They showed in a lot in Bushwick (across the street from the lot Wang took over later that day), and they gave us low-slung, beautiful deep blue satin pants, boxy grey suiting (a new move for the team) and a translucent mini dress with red striping.

As usual, re-interpretations of nudity and unconventional displays of the body (a fuzzy sheer dress had a neckline hitting mid-nipple, for instance) were a talking point. The Eckhaus Latta man or woman has an unapologetic sensuality and rawness. Gender is no consideration. Men wear high-necked lace shirting, dressed up with sheer neon green sleeves; female bodied models could wear just a slashed up slip of a baby blue translucent dress, or JNCO-style cream white jeans.

Latta and Eckhaus reached inside their community for casting, as always. Hannelore Knuts, Kelela, Alex Olson, and, in a move that caught more attention than almost anything else they presented, the very pregnant artist Maia Ruth Lee walked.

The final looks were all in the aforementioned soft blue sheer fabric. Ostensibly naked (did it look fake because it looked so good or did being fake make it good?) and still, not up for grabs. A powerful statement.